1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to portable cassette recorders for use in imprinters and in particular to a recorder of the foregoing type having a supply cartridge, a take-up spool, a brake for the spool and a document holder.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
As discussed in the above-mentioned related applications, imprinters wherein data from a plurality of different transactions are imprinted on a single transaction log sheet are known. Further, portable cassette recorders for use in such imprinters are also known. The above imprinters and recorders typically employ single transaction log sheets to record the data from the different transactions.
Utilization of such log sheets has been promising because the data from as many as twenty six (for example) different transactions can be recorded onto a single log sheet. This is an improvement over a method currently employed where a separate invoice slip is transmitted to a central processing and billing location for each transaction. That is, in this current method, the invoice employed to record a credit card transaction at a gas station or the like provides three copies of the transaction, one for the customer, one for the dealer and one for the central processing location. However, not only does this method tend to be unwieldy due to the large number of invoices that must be forwarded to the central location but also it is prone to copies of the invoice being lost or damaged due to the large number being handled by the dealer station.
By recording a plurality of different transactions on a single log sheet, the amount of paper and number of sheets that have to be forwarded to the central location can be significantly reduced thereby mitigating the above problems. As stated above, the transaction log sheets employed in the portable cassette recorders of the above-mentioned prior art typically can record twenty six different transactions. Thus, where twenty six different invoice copies are forwarded to the central location in current systems, a single sheet can be forwarded in their place.
However, a shortcoming has arisen with respect to the twenty six entry, transaction log sheets. That is, in order to incorporate twenty six transactions on a single sheet, it is typically necessary to provide a data entry block for each transaction, the width of which extends across the sheet and the height of which is typically 3/8". However, the 3/8" limitation on the height of the data entry block has been unacceptable in certain applications. Thus, it is preferred that the data entry blocks have a height of typically 1". However, when the height of the data entry blocks is increased to 1", the number of blocks per sheet is reduced to about twelve. Although the number of blocks per sheet could be increased back to twenty six by simply increasing the length of the sheet, this introduces further problems because the increased size of the sheet makes it difficult to process it not only in the recorder but in the handling of it by the dealer and central location. However, by reducing the number of transactions to twelve per sheet, the overall purpose of employing a transaction log in the first place is compromised. That is, now one sheet is forwarded to the central processing location in place of twelve items rather than twenty six items.